Radiation therapy (in North America), or radiotherapy (in the UK and Australia) also called radiation oncology, and sometimes abbreviated to XRT, is the medical use of ionizing radiation as part of cancer treatment to control malignant cells (not to be confused with radiology, the use of radiation in medical imaging and diagnosis).
Investigators from the University of Trento’s Physics Department discovered a link between the effect of radiation on DNA and the time when the damaged molecule breaks irreversibly.
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy aim to destroy cancer cells by inducing DNA double-strand breaks – damage that, once inflicted, usually causes the cells to die. But damage to a cell's genetic material also activates a signaling pathway called IKK/NF-κB that helps prevent cell death, thus limiting the success of these treatments in patients.
For most of our tissues and cells, a lack of oxygen, or hypoxia, is bad news. Cancer cells, on the other hand, can thrive in these hypoxic conditions, which render tumors less susceptible to anti-cancer treatments, including radiation.
Lung cancer, one of the most aggressive forms of cancer, continues to be a leading cause of death worldwide. Although several new therapies have been developed for this disease, it has a poor prognosis in its advanced stages.
A key enzyme in sugar metabolism is inactivated particularly easily and efficiently by oxidative stress.
A team of scientists led by Dr. Kei-ichi TAKATA from the Center for Genomic Integrity within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), has discovered a new type of DNA repair mechanism that cancer cells use to recover from next-generation cancer radiation therapy.
Brain tumors are notoriously hard to treat. One reason is the challenge posed by the blood-brain barrier, a network of blood vessels and tissue with closely spaced cells.
The most detailed study of Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, has offered considerable insight into what tumor cells must do to sustain. The Wellcome Sanger Institute discovered that cancer cells utilize signals to attract specific types of immune cells and direct them not to attack.
Due to the continuous cellular activity, malfunctions frequently occur, making error-correcting systems crucial for cells. However, it serves the cancer cells’ best interests to cause errors when it comes to destroying them.
According to the findings of a meta-analysis proposed at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium held on December 6–10th, 2022, patients with invasive breast cancer who had low scores on an investigational gene molecular signature seemed to have similar rates of local recurrence regardless of whether they received adjuvant radiation therapy after breast-conserving surgery.
Bowel cancer patients could in future benefit from a new 3D bioprinting technology which would use their own cells to replicate the complex cellular environment of solid tumors in 3D models.
Researchers from UC, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University at Buffalo demonstrated that light-activated proteins can help normalize dysfunction within cells.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have identified a novel mechanism for cancer cells to repair DNA damage.
Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute have revealed how a mechanism involved in the regeneration of tissue can help the spread of cancer.
A research team from Cologne and Osnabrück has investigated in detail how messenger substances signal inflammation during the removal of damaged cells in the body.
Doctors and scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and from Heidelberg University's Medical Faculty Mannheim have successfully tested a neoantigen-specific transgenic immune cell therapy for malignant brain tumors for the first time using an experimental model in mice.
New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that radiation therapy can reprogram heart muscle cells to what appears to be a younger state, fixing electrical problems that cause a life-threatening arrhythmia without the need for a long-used, invasive procedure.
Malignant tumors can enhance their ability to survive and spread by suppressing antitumor immune cells in their vicinity, but a study led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian has uncovered a new way to counter this immunosuppressive effect.
In the evolving field of cancer biology and treatment, innovations in organ-on-a-chip microdevices allow researchers to discover more about the disease outside the human body.
Medulloblastoma is a rare but devastating childhood brain cancer. This cancer can spread through the spinal fluid and be deposited elsewhere in the brain or spine.